Are You Able to Solve This? The Forgotten Dutch Invention That Shaped the Modern Globe
One can find many candidates to claim the designation as “planet’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.
According to a new book, however, that title should go to a automated timber mill invented by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before mechanised cutting, constructing a simple trading ship required approximately 10 sawyers working for three months,” writes the author. “Using wind-driven sawmills, an identical quantity of processed timber could be produced in less than seven days.”
Owing to this speedy mechanical saw, which turned timber into planks using virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to construct vessels more quickly than anyone else, an advantage that sparked a century of Dutch naval, economic and artistic supremacy in the continent and the globe.
The Original Genuine Industrial Machine
The inventor's sawmill, contends Dávila, represented “mankind’s first authentic industrial machine.” A windmill turned a wheel. One component converted its circular movement to up-and-down action to power the saw. Another component changed that same spinning movement into a sideway’s motion feeding the timber toward the cutter. A ratchet system moved the log ahead a measured step each cycle.
“Every component was simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to combine them so they operated in a perfectly controlled order, sawing with each downward motion and moving with each upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of fundamental components.”
A fact that leads us to the current puzzle. The task is you to reinvent a key the fundamental ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism which converts circular motion to vertical action. You have these components only: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two rods. A “guide”, that is a tube or sleeve into which a single the rods will fit snugly. (Assume you can mount components on a base, so the parts do not collapse.)
The solution returns later today UK time with the answer.
In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to propose (less celebrated) candidates as the world’s greatest creation.
